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DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



farm crops, as distinct from selling them and buying raw materials, the 

 one-family farm is the most efficient unit that has yet been found. 



But the big farmer can beat the individual small farmer in buying 

 and selling. It would seem desirable, from the standpoint of national 

 efficiency, to preserve the small farm as the productive unit, but to 

 organize a number of small farms into larger units for buying and selling. 

 Thus we should have the most efficient units both in producing and in 

 buying and selling. 



If this is not done, the only farmers who can enter successfully into 

 the production of agricultural specialties, where the problem of market- 

 ing is greater than the problem of producing, will be the big capitalistic 

 farmers. The small farmer may hold his own in the growing of staple 

 crops, in which field the problem of economic production is perhaps greater 

 than that of efficient marketing. The reason for this is that there is a 

 well-organized market for staple crops, and the problem of marketing is, 

 therefore, somewhat less difficult than in the case of agricultural special- 

 ties. But even in the growing of staple crops the small farmer will have 

 a hard time of it if he is forced to compete with the big farm when it 

 is cultivated by gangs of cheap laborers. 



The two worst enemies of the small farmer are the opponents of 

 cooperative buying and selling on the one hand, and the advocates of 

 enlarged immigration to the rural districts on the other. The latter would 

 help the big farmer in the buying of labor for his farm, and reduce the 

 price of the small farmer's own labor when he undertook to sell it in the 

 form of produce. 



There is a story of an aged savage who, after having lived in civilized 

 communities most of his life, returned to his native tribe in his old age, 

 saying that he had tried civilization for forty years and it wasn't worth 

 the trouble. Much of the philosophy of civilization is summed up in that 

 remark. Civilization consists largely in taking trouble. Genius, in the 

 individual, has been said to consist in the capacity for taking infinite pains 

 in one's work. It is this capacity which marks the superior race as well 

 as the superior individual. They who find the taking of pains too burden- 

 some to be borne, will naturally decide that civilization is not worth the 

 trouble. They who do not find it so very burdensome to take pains, will 

 naturally decide that civilization is worth the trouble, and will therefore 

 become civilized. 



This principle applies to every stage of civilization and progress. The 

 greatest advancement is made by those who are capable of taking greatest 

 pains. It applies especially to agricultural progress. It is more trouble 

 to select than not to select seed, and to select it in the field than in the 

 bin. It is more trouble to test cows than not to test them, to keep accounts 

 than not to keep them, to diversify or rotate crops than not to diversify 

 or rotate, to mix fertilizers intelligently than to buy them already mixed, 

 to cooperate with one's pig-headed neighbors, especially if one is oneself 

 a little pig-headed, than to go it alone. It is also more profitable. In 



